Will proposed EU legislation “stick the knife” into US tech giants?

Matt Reynolds, tech reporter for Wired In the halls of the European Parliament’s Strasbourg building, a single word in an MEP’s ear is enough to stoke up feelings of European solidarity and anti-American hubris. GAFA – a term coined in the French press that quickly leaked out to wider European usage – is an easy shorthand for lobbyists and legislators who wish to conjure the spectre of American cultural imperialism. It stands for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, but barely underneath the surface is a sly criticism of big US tech firms that seek to sidestep regulation and leave Europe in their thrall. Trump card Over the past two-and-a-half years the EU has been holding on to an anti-GAFA trump card – a sweeping update to online copyright. But while MEPs have clamoured to stick the knife into big tech, they are in danger of ushering in legislation that could end up solidifying the hegemony of exactly the same US firms they are so keen to curtail. The controversial bits of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market – as far as the online giants are concerned – come down to two articles that its critics say will fundamentally change the way the internet works in Europe and stifle online innovation in the process. Article 13 – sometimes called the “meme ban” – would make online platforms (think YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) responsible for identifying and removing any copyrighted content that appears on their services. Tech firms argue that this would require the use of automatic content filters to detect copyrighted content, which would mean that parodies – and memes – might be caught in the crossfire. Equally controversial is Article 11 – the link tax. The objective here is to get news aggregator sites – such as Google News – to pay publishers for using snippets of their articles on their platforms. Attempts to bring in similar rules on a national level have already been tried (and have failed) in Spain and Germany. Copyright experts have roundly criticised both articles as unworkable and incompatible with existing EU legislation. Platforms such as Google News control such a significant share of traffic to online publishers, it makes sense that big publishers will be quick to sign royalty-free licensing deals that benefit them both So how did such a seemingly flawed directive get passed, last September, by the European Parliament? A statement given by the MEP who played the leading role in shepherding the directive through the vote gives us one clue. “I am very glad that despite the very strong lobbying campaign by the internet giants, there is now a majority in the full house backing the need to protect the principle of fair pay for European creatives,” said the German MEP Axel Voss in the wake of the vote. Of course, what Voss neglected to mention is that – if the European Commission’s lobbying records are anything to go by – it was actually the music and publishing industry lobbyists who were shouting the loudest during the run-up to the vote. But this didn’t stop anti-GAFA triumphalism reigning in the wake of September’s vote. The sad irony is that if the controversial directive ever makes it into law – and right now it is languishing in the EU’s legislative long grass – it will only bolster Google’s current online dominance to the detriment of less well‑established competitors. If online platforms have to put in place filters to check uploads for copyrighted content, Google already has a system it can sell them: content ID. And since platforms such as Google News control such a significant share of traffic to online publishers, it makes sense that big publishers will be quick to sign royalty-free licensing deals that benefit them both. Legislators, take note: even when Silicon Valley loses, it’s still winning.